


Identical

by moonix



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Christmas Presents, Gen, Holiday Fic Exchange, Pizza Discourse, twinyards, video games - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-03
Updated: 2017-12-03
Packaged: 2019-02-10 06:23:23
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,837
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12906021
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonix/pseuds/moonix
Summary: Identical doesn't always mean identical. In which Aaron conducts a little case study.





	Identical

**Author's Note:**

> Tiny mention of Tilda and drugs but nothing explicit. Written for the AFTG Winter Exchange for @artyprose on Tumblr, who wanted twin interaction! I hope you like it!

“...can't believe that you would defile pizza night like this, Matt, I'm disappointed in you, this is vile and upsetting and...”

Nicky rambles on. Aaron rolls his eyes and looks at the innocuous bowl of pineapple slices on the counter. He doesn't understand why Nicky is kicking up such a fuss about it – food is food, if he doesn't like it there's plenty of other toppings arranged on plates around their kitchen that he can choose from. Pizza night was a stupid idea in the first place, there's already been more arguments than he can keep track of, and they're only just getting started.

He contemplates the blank canvas of his freshly rolled out dough as he smears tomato sauce on it. A bowl of ham gets handed around and he scatters some on top, meaning to leave it at that and go for the cheese next, but then he catches Nicky looking and him and slowly reaches out to grab the pineapple instead.

The progression of horrified expressions on his cousin's face is entertaining to watch, to say the least.

“Traitor!” Nicky gasps, pointing an accusing finger at him. Aaron takes his time, liberally distributing the pineapple over his pizza and slurping the juice off his fingers, though when he sets down the bowl it gets whisked away by a hand that looks like his own except for the scrapes and scars and the one mole that Aaron has and Andrew doesn't.

“You too, Andrew?” Nicky wails, betrayed. Andrew ignores him, packing his pizza with a thick layer of pineapple and not much else.

Their pizzas go into the oven at the same time, as they are the first ones done with theirs – Dan and Matt seem more interested in starting a food war, Allison is turning her olives into a rude shape, and Renee is the only one listening to Kevin's historical account of how the pizza came to America.

Nicky is still muttering darkly under his breath as he arranges pepperoni slices on his pizza. He brightens up when Neil comes back from corralling the freshmen who seem to have set up a bowling tournament in the hall outside, and immediately ushers him over to the table, plopping a chunk of dough in front of him with floury hands.

“Neil! Help me settle this madness once and for all: pineapple on pizza, yay or nay?”

“There's pineapple?” Neil says eagerly, surveying the toppings. Andrew wordlessly pushes the almost finished bowl at him and Nicky throws his hands up in despair.

“Heathens! All of you!”

Aaron wrinkles his nose at the thought of having something in common with Josten and goes to wash his hands at the sink. He crouches down to look into the oven where two almost identical pizzas are baking side by side.

Huh. Interesting.

~

He turns it into a case study.

Pineapple discourse aside, their eating habits couldn't be more different. Aaron tends to go for the protein, piling up his plate and wolfing it down as fast as he can manage without choking, a sad habit left over from worse days. He recognises the protective curl of Andrew's arm around his plate, like he still expects someone to take it away from him at any moment, but Andrew eats slowly, deliberately; taking his food apart into smaller and smaller bites, separating it into its component parts. He catches him spearing a single pea on his fork at lunch and shakes his head, his own serving of chicken and rice long since gone.

They both dislike scratchy blankets and tend to go for simple, practical clothes. Aaron's wardrobe doesn't boast much more variety than Andrew's uniform black and dark grey, though he sticks more to the blue spectrum these days, because there's nothing he hates more than getting up to find Andrew camped out on his sofa uninvited, wearing his clothes. That trick got old years ago, and it never bodes well for Aaron.

Not that the blue stops Andrew, but at least it gives Aaron the satisfaction of this one small surrender on Andrew's part.

Back when Aaron was still living in Andrew's dorm, they had a habit of waking up at the same time. Andrew's meds threw that off for a while, and Aaron thinks it was probably because they're both light sleepers and easily alerted to any sort of movement or noise, but sometimes he felt a bit creeped out by seeing the flash of Andrew's eyes in the dark as they opened, unerringly, seconds after Aaron's own.

Twin studies, he thinks. He needs to look up twin studies.

He avoids his old dorm once he's out of there. If he has to enter it, he makes sure that Neil isn't there, which usually means that his brother also isn't there. Kevin he can deal with as long as he doesn't try to rope Aaron into watching an Exy game with him, and he's gotten so used to Nicky's chatter as the constant background noise to his life that for a while there it almost felt too quiet when he moved in with Matt.

Matt's also a pretty talkative guy though, whether Aaron contributes much to the conversation or not, so it evens out in the end.

Most of the others are in class when Aaron pops over to his old dorm to steal some milk because he and Matt are out after a late-night cereal binge when they both had essays to write. He's handed in his essay, but he needs coffee now to make it through the two chapters in his textbook that he was supposed to summarise for his study group, and coffee is only bearable with milk.

The dorm is dark when he stumbles inside with the key he took from Nicky earlier – pick-pocketing, another bad habit he and Andrew share, though Aaron is pretty sure that no one is aware of his skills in that department and he'd like to keep it that way. He's not proud of the things he did to get his hands on drug money, but that's in the past now; he has a whole hard-earned future to look forward to.

He leaves the lights off and stops in his tracks when something moves in one of the beanbags. The dark lump turns out to be Andrew, wrapped in a blanket and staring at the muted Left 4 Dead loading screen. He looks like he hasn't slept.

Aaron walks into the kitchen and pours milk into his coffee, then grabs a packet of Kevin's breakfast bars on his way out and drops them on the floor beside Andrew. His brother regards them with a blank expression for a moment and Aaron is about to walk out again when Andrew wordlessly offers one of the controllers to him.

“I have homework,” Aaron says. Andrew keeps holding the controller out to him. “Fine. Half an hour.”

Half an hour turns into two hours. They finish the breakfast bars between them, though Aaron eats most of them, and they both wince when Nicky comes back and opens the blinds and the window to let in the cold December air.

“Jesus,” he says, “Have you two been here all day?”

Aaron only grunts in response and Andrew hisses, “Witch!” to alert him to the imminent danger on screen. Nicky sighs and picks up some of the trash that has accumulated around them before going into he kitchen to start another pot of coffee. He exclaims about finding his keys on the counter, gripes about someone leaving the milk out (Aaron twitches guiltily) and turns on the radio to drown out some of the gory sounds from the game, but Andrew only turns the volume up higher.

“Just so you know,” Nicky leans out of the kitchen to inform them, “You two have identically horrific bed hair. It's kind of cute.”

~

The only thing Aaron likes about Christmas is the fact that he gets to catch up on both sleep and work over the holidays. He doesn't like to think about the years when his mom's idea of festive cheer was to pass out cold on the kitchen floor by ten o'clock, wants to think of the good years even less, where Tilda had gone all out decorating the house and buying them dinner and splurging on lavish presents for Aaron, because that had all inevitably gone to shit sooner or later and she'd usually ended up selling the gifts to get more drugs anyway.

Nicky always made an effort to have some sort of Christmas celebration with them, but neither Aaron nor Andrew had been very receptive, and then last year – well. Aaron really, _really_ doesn't want to think about last year.

Which is why he's terrified of spending Christmas break at Katelyn's house this year, with her family and her sister's new baby and ten thousand expectations for him to join in with the wholesome merriment. His brain has already played through various levels of a fun game called “Ways Aaron can ruin this for everyone and himself”, a game he's very proficient at after so many years of continuous practice.

He is pacing outside the dorms, waiting for Katelyn to pick him up, his suitcase packed and ready behind him. Aaron doesn't smoke, but his body knows the taste and effect of nicotine well enough for him to crave a cigarette right now, and he chews his nails just for something to do with his mouth. On the other side of the parking lot Andrew is loading Kevin and Neil into his car – they're going skiing, of all things. Aaron hesitates for a moment before hurrying over to them, pulling something out of his inner jacket pocket. He got it last minute, hasn't even wrapped it; but Andrew takes it when he thrusts it at him and that already counts as a small win.

“Happy Christmas, or whatever,” Aaron mutters, scuffing his shoe against the pavement. “Maybe we can play it together some time.”

Andrew looks at the new zombie survival game and hums before tossing it into the car with the rest of the luggage. He slams the trunk shut and swivels around again at the last moment with an offering of his own.

Like Aaron's, it's not wrapped; it's not even folded properly, just a lump of black fabric that Aaron shakes out to see that it's a nice sweater. Cashmere, maybe. Not that Aaron knows shit about different types of wool, but he knows that's the one Andrew favours.

“Now we match,” Andrew says, bone-dry. His eyes slide to something behind Aaron. “Better run.”

It's as much of a season's greeting as he'll get from his brother, but Aaron takes it, tucking it close to his chest along with the sweater. Katelyn's car is waiting – Katelyn's family are waiting, eager to test him and deem him unworthy, and Aaron has always thrived best under a challenge.

He watches his brother drive off and tips him a small salute.


End file.
